Camping with Firearm-Post Bear Mauling

[Pilat]

THe difference is that the bear is much more sensitive to smell, and therefore more sensitive to the freaking spray.

The same argument could be said about guns and their bullets. I'm not sure I am more able to withstand a bullet fired from the gun of my friend than a bear would. In fact, I am sure that a bullet not actually killing the bear will enrage it, just like the whipping did in the video.

Edit: The people in the video got sprayed, yet they managed to function.

 

[k9lestat]

Not arguing that, just people take about the spray like it's not dangerous. People don't realize how long the effects last if not deconned. They'll be walking blind tripping over crap. Getting lost. Suffer burns if not deconned.

I could careless if you carry a gun or not. I just want the people with spray understand the risks.

I've sprayed people in my job. Been around people spraying other people. Rarely will you deploy pepper spray especially a fogger type and not get exposed.

And for Pete's sake wash you hands before you go potty afterwards. That needs no explanation. Lol

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[Pilat]

LOL, I can just imagine that! OUch!! :jumping:

 

[Dalko43]

My point about it working (after reading the entire wiki entry) was that it did indeed work when they got around to actually use it, rather than try to beat the bear off with a stick.

Yeah, but that's like saying a life jacket saved a passenger who died of hypothermia from drowning after the Titanic sank. Did the life-jacket do its job? Yes. Does it really matter? No, because the passenger is still dead.

A gun would probably not have helped either, assuming you actually hit with a kill shot, if you take into account their behaviour. I mean, if the man had still failed to have his arm up in the proper position, and they had still first tried to whip the bear into submission as it happened.

I never said a firearm would have been any more or less effective in that situation.

No, bear spray is not a guarantee, nor is a gun. But after seeing that video, it is very evident that it works, and works very well. Of course you have to actually spray it for it to have effect. But the same applies to a gun.

No one tool can guarantee a certain result. The main difference between a firearm and bear spray is that a firearm has the potential to be lethal.

Btw, we can determine to some degree what might have happened if only [Dot, dot, dot] in some cases. That is why we have notions such as negligence, gross negligence, manslaughter, or even just "mechanical flaw", or even "pilot error". There was a plane crash a while ago where the thing that led to a plane crash was a taped-over pitot tube, which ended up confusing the pilots, which then led to a crash shortly after take-off. So, I do believe you can at times find some things - especially when it's on video like this, to at least find contributing factors.

You cannot verify or prove an outcome that never happened. If the pilots, in your example, had not been confused, you cannot factually prove they would have safely completed the flight...there could have been another malfunction or another pilot error that resulted in a crash. All you can do in hindsight is speculate as to what might have happened. That was my meaning behind my earlier post.

 

[Pilat]

Yeah, but that's like saying a life jacket saved a passenger who died of hypothermia from drowning after the Titanic sank. Did the life-jacket do its job? Yes. Does it really matter? No, because the passenger is still dead.

No, since we were talking about effectiveness of a certain thing (i.e. guns vs. bear spray), of course it matters if it is actually used and used in time. Did you read the wiki-entry on just how much went wrong, and see the video where they first tried to whip the bear into submission, and someone having to shout "spray the bear!! Spray the bear!!"?

I never said a firearm would have been any more or less effective in that situation.

Sorry, then, I must have assumed that since you seem to argue that bear spray doesn't work, you must think that a gun would have solved it. Especially in the light that the bloke was properly injured before they even got around to using the spray.

No one tool can guarantee a certain result. The main difference between a firearm and bear spray is that a firearm has the potential to be lethal.

A piece of string used just right has "the potential to be lethal."
In all seriousness, that lethality is one of the reasons I, personally, don't like guns. Especially not if a scared-****less buddy of mine is to try and "save" me. Not only does he have to NOT hit me, he has to plae that tiny piece of lead someplace in the bear that kills it instantly, as otherwise I would fear what I will now refer to as the "whipping effect".
Did you notice just how "imprecisely" those people sprayed, and just how effective it was on the bear, even if they didn't make a "direct-up-the-nose" spray?

You cannot verify or prove an outcome that never happened.

No, but you can say that if someone jumps out in front of a truck that it might be the fault of the jumper, or if someone goes to sea in a actual bathtub and pulls the plug, that it was inevitable or close to enevitable that he would get wet. All this is what risk management is about. As well as a big par of the judicial system, as well as insurance.

If the pilots, in your example, had not been confused, you cannot factually prove they would have safely completed the flight...there could have been another malfunction or another pilot error that resulted in a crash. All you can do in hindsight is speculate as to what might have happened. That was my meaning behind my earlier post.

Sigh, yes, we can't know for certain, that if I were to jump out of a plane without a chute and die, that I wouldn't have died anyway, from, say, a heart attack. Yes, the pilots could have crashed the plane later on, or the engines could have malfunctioned instead. But you accuse (okay, that's too strong a word) me of speculating when I am pointing out all the things leading up to this (bear) accident, all the while speculating that if there was no cause A (pitot tube taped over in my example), there could have been a cause B. If that's not speculation, I don't know what is.

 

[k9lestat]

http://youtu.be/G9rXDmRasJs

It would awesome if tazer made their shotgun round with this kind of juice on a 30 second burst with a pause and another 30 second burst. I'm a fat old crippled cop and I could cover a sizable distance in 1 minute when properly motivated.

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[Pilat]

Wow, that's impressive.

 

[k9lestat]

Google taser x-12

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[Pilat]

Thanks, k9, I will

 

[k9lestat]

I'm thinking about getting some when boys start calling on my stepdaughter.

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[Pilat]

He, he, I might steal that idea for my daughter too.

I looked it up. That is quite a "shotgun". Very impressive. I wonder if the prongs could penetrate bear fur?

 

[Dalko43]

No, since we were talking about effectiveness of a certain thing (i.e. guns vs. bear spray), of course it matters if it is actually used and used in time. Did you read the wiki-entry on just how much went wrong, and see the video where they first tried to whip the bear into submission, and someone having to shout "spray the bear!! Spray the bear!!"?

I generally don't rely on wikipedia articles for my source of information on these types of things, so no I didn't read that article, but I did read newspaper reports.

I wasn't talking about the effectiveness of bear spray in this incident. I was talking about the relevance of bear spray to this incident. The guy died, so the fact that the bear spray caused the bear to stop attacking doesn't really mean anything. And FYI, I'm actually a proponent of carrying bear spray in bear country and I appreciate its capabilities. I also understand its limitations and that's why I believe carrying a firearm (in addition to bear spray) provides added security.

A piece of string used just right has "the potential to be lethal."
In all seriousness, that lethality is one of the reasons I, personally, don't like guns. Especially not if a scared-****less buddy of mine is to try and "save" me. Not only does he have to NOT hit me, he has to plae that tiny piece of lead someplace in the bear that kills it instantly, as otherwise I would fear what I will now refer to as the "whipping effect".
Did you notice just how "imprecisely" those people sprayed, and just how effective it was on the bear, even if they didn't make a "direct-up-the-nose" spray?

A firearm is, by its nature, designed to incapacitate or kill. A piece of string, and bear spray for that matter, is not. So of course anything, like a piece of string, has some statistical chance of inducing a lethal effect....but the probability of inflicting death with a firearm (or some other weapon) is so much greater that its really not even worth comparing to something inconsequential, like a piece of string or even bear spray (when it comes to deadliness). It's just like that old saying: You put enough monkeys behind a typewriter, there is the statistical chance that one of them will produce a Shakespeare piece. Is it possible? Yes. Is anyone going to hold their breath as they wait for that to happen? Probably not.

As for you being uncomfortable with firearms....well I agree that its a good idea that you refrain from carrying one. Just understand that there are a lot of people out there who are very comfortable and very familiar with firearms, which is why they are a viable option for some.

I also would advise you not to judge others based on what you think they might do in a life-or-death situation. One of the basic rules of firearms safety is 'Know your target and what lies beyond.' If I were trying to help a person who was being mauled by a bear (and for some reason had no bear spray available) I would not fire my weapon unless I was sure of where my bullet was going, and I suspect most other responsible gun owners would act in the same manner.

And you probably owe it to yourself to read up on the ballistic principles and performance of bullets. A lot of people seem to think that bullets are incapable of inflicting massive damage on large animals due to the projectile's small size, relatively speaking. Remember Force = Mass x Acceleration. The bullet's mass (also known as grain, like a 168 grain 308 caliber) is one part of that equation. The other part is the bullet's acceleration. Small bullets hitting an animal's center of mass are capable of quickly incapacitating most animals (through momentum/shock and destruction of vital organs, bones).

Here is an example of hunters taking down a charging bear. Note that there were multiple shots fired, but the bear tumbled to the ground after the 1st shot:


Also, here is an example of bear spray being deployed and the bear hardly showed any sign of irritation:


I'm not saying that firearms always produce the desired outcome. Nor am I saying that bear spray never works (in fact, it has a high success rate). I'm simply saying that no one tool is perfect, and thus its a good idea to have redundancy or backup measures.

No, but you can say that if someone jumps out in front of a truck that it might be the fault of the jumper, or if someone goes to sea in a actual bathtub and pulls the plug, that it was inevitable or close to enevitable that he would get wet. All this is what risk management is about. As well as a big par of the judicial system, as well as insurance.

I think you and I are talking about 2 different things here. You're talking about risk analysis being conducted proactively before a situation or problem occurs.

I'm talking about stating what is and what is not fact in hindsight, or after an incident has already taken place.

I agree jumping in front of a moving truck is not a good idea and will likely result in injury and/or death. Similarly, I agree that carrying bear spray (among other tools) is a wise decision while camping in bear country, since it gives you a better chance of surviving a bear encounter.

However, that's not the same as saying that someone who was killed and eaten by a bear would have lived had they been carrying bear spray. You can speculate what would have happened in hindsight, but that's all it is...speculation.

Using hindsight, can we say that some idiot who died jumping out of a plane without a parachute probably would have lived had he been wearing a parachute? Yeah, that's a safe assumption, but we're still making an educated guess to arrive at that conclusion; there is no way of factually proving what that idiot's fate would have been in a different scenario.

 

[Pilat]

THe wiki entry has links to articles.

Secondly, risk analysis was an example of something that uses analysis to come to the conclusion whether something is putting someone/something at risk. The reason it is relevant is that if they had done that assesment and followed through, they should have done things differently.

Thirdly, you're back to speculating that it could still have gone wrong even if they had done everything right. Yes, but with that attitude, you cannot do risk analysis, you cannot do anything wrong, you can't assign blame in anything, including killings, you can't do anything, and you can't improve on anything, can't mitigate risk or anything else. Hell, "working brakes, seatbelts in a car, and helmets on a motorcycle are pointless because there is no guarantee that it will save an individual".

Fourth, with that I'm done. I see no point in arguing with someone who's trying to pocket-philosophise that because one cannot guarantee a successful outcome by doing things differently, there is no point in looking at what went wrong "in hindsight". I simply can't be bothered anymore, as it is obvious that you're not going to listen to anything being said.

Edit: I never claimed that someone carrying bear spray would automatically survive. Never. There are no guarantees. We were discussing what went wrong with that "wrestling" bear. Not that carrying bear spray is a guarantee. Please stop strawmanning me.

 

[emtmark]

I guess if you spray yourself in a bear encounter do it right, spray yourself down thoroughly. That way if bear gets close enough to you maybe it'll be enough for it to leave you alone.

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Who doesn't like a little pepper on the steak?



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[Dalko43]

THe wiki entry has links to articles.

Well then maybe next time you can refer me to an actual article or news source rather than a wiki entry.

Secondly, risk analysis was an example of something that uses analysis to come to the conclusion whether something is putting someone/something at risk. The reason it is relevant is that if they had done that assesment and followed through, they should have done things differently.

As I said earlier, I agree that proactive planning, such as risk analysis, is a worthwhile activity.

Thirdly, you're back to speculating that it could still have gone wrong even if they had done everything right. Yes, but with that attitude, you cannot do risk analysis, you cannot do anything wrong, you can't assign blame in anything, including killings, you can't do anything, and you can't improve on anything, can't mitigate risk or anything else. Hell, "working brakes, seatbelts in a car, and helmets on a motorcycle are pointless because there is no guarantee that it will save an individual".

I was not speculating anything. Rather I was simply saying that any claim or statement on what might have happened had the bear spray been deployed sooner is speculation. Some speculation is more sound than other (e.g. most would agree that a dead airplane jumper, from your earlier example, likely would have survived had he worn a parachute) but its still speculation and not fact....that's my only point on that. I'm not at all sure why you find this concept so provocative.

As for throwing aside all conventional wisdom on learning from past mistakes, you're trying to turn this discussion into something that it is not. Of course people learn from their mistakes and find areas for improvement (which is why things like seat belts have been developed). And there are most certainly lessons to be learned from this incident with bear attack (I never said otherwise). Please recall that your post that I was responding to initially was claiming that the bear spray had worked:

My point about it working (after reading the entire wiki entry) was that it did indeed work when they got around to actually use it, rather than try to beat the bear off with a stick.

My response was that the bear spray's effectiveness did not make the the victim any less dead and so was a moot point and that any presumption that an earlier deployment of the bear spray would have saved the victim's life is speculation not fact, regardless of how well founded that speculation might be. It's highly probable he would have survived had the spray been used earlier and thus there is a lesson to be learned, but probability does not = certainty.

Do you understand what I am getting at? I'm not at all disputing what lessons could be learned from this incident.

I'm arguing about the semantics (in terms of 'fact' vs 'probability') while you're arguing about laws of probability (which I don't dispute).

Fourth, with that I'm done. I see no point in arguing with someone who's trying to pocket-philosophise that because one cannot guarantee a successful outcome by doing things differently, there is no point in looking at what went wrong "in hindsight". I simply can't be bothered anymore, as it is obvious that you're not going to listen to anything being said.

Edit: I never claimed that someone carrying bear spray would automatically survive. Never. There are no guarantees. We were discussing what went wrong with that "wrestling" bear. Not that carrying bear spray is a guarantee. Please stop strawmanning me.

Please show me where I was "strawmanning" you. You also don't need to get so worked up over this...this is a forum...people have opinions....often times they differ from one another.